Politics and Scientific Expertise: Scientists, Risk Perception, and Nuclear Waste Policy

To study the homogeneity and influences on scientists'perspectives of environmental risks, we have examined similarities and differences in risk perceptions, particularly regarding nuclear wastes, and policy preferences among 1011 scientists and engineers. We found significant differences ( p 0.05)in the patterns of beliefs among scientists from different fields of research. In contrast to physicists, chemists, and engineers, life scientists tend to: (a)perceive the greatest risks from nuclear energy and nuclear waste management; (b)perceive higher levels of overall environmental risk; (c)strongly oppose imposing risks on unconsenting individuals; and (d)prefer stronger requirements for environmental management. On some issues related to priorities among public problems and calls for government action, there are significant variations among life scientists or physical scientists. We also found that–independently of field of research–perceptions of risk and its correlates are significantly associated with the type of institution in which the scientist is employed. Scientists in universities or state and local governments tend to see the risks of nuclear energy and wastes as greater than scientists who work as business consultants, for federal organizations, or for private research laboratories. Significant differences also are found in priority given to environmental risks, the perceived proximity of environmental disaster, willingness to impose risks on an unconsenting population, and the necessity of accepting risks and sacrifices.     

Improving the contributions of technology assessment to the health care system of the U.S.A.

Summary Based on 14 case studies of highly effective therapies and the reasons they succeeded less frequently than they could, we propose a variety of steps to improve the health care system of the U.S.A. Whatever proposal emerges from current national debates until innovations are shown to be safe and effective, they should not be supported; when slightly better technologies are much more expensive than other good ones we need to consider appropriate choices carefully; simplified billing and bookkeping would reduce our costs; when a technology is rapidly introduced cautionnary measures may be needed; tracking immunization and repairing their omissions requires a new system; educational programs such as seen effective in hypertension should be applied in other areas such as vaccination; in organ transplantation the nation should consider “presumed consent”; our payment system sometimes creates perverse incentives and therefore needs review; and the preferences of the public in allocation of health resources need to be discovered once the public is informed about the issues. Research supported by Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.     

论合同法上的情事变更原则

法律上对情事变更原则的适用规定了严格的条件,适用情事变更原则的法律效力主要体现变更合同、解除合同两个方面,而且情事变更与不可抗力、商业风险存在着明显的差别。社会主义市场经济的发展及与国际市场的接轨,决定了情事变更原则应当成为我国合同法上最重要的法律原则之一,它有利于进一步完善我国现行合同法律制度。     

Government Risk Management Priorities: A Comparison of the Preferences of Asian Indian Americans and Other Americans

A survey was conducted of approximately 200 Asian Indian Americans and 200 other residents of New Jersey in order to understand the risk management priorities that they want government to have. We found that Asian Indian Americans, especially younger women, focused on personal/family risks, such as alcohol and drug abuse, sexual abuse, and domestic violence. The New Jersey comparison group, in contrast, placed war/terrorism and loss of health care services and insurance at the top of their priorities for government. These results suggest stressful acculturation-related issues within the Asian Indian community. Both populations want more risk management from government than they believe government is currently providing. Respondents who wanted more from government tended to dread the risk, be fearful of the consequences, trust government, and have a feeling of personal efficacy. Within the Asian Indian American sample, wide variations were observed by language spoken at home and religious affiliation. Notably, Muslims and Hindi language speakers tended not to trust government and hence wanted less government involvement. This study supports our call for studies of recent migrant populations and Johnson's for testing ethnic identity and acculturation as factors in risk judgments.     

Subjective probabilities and utility with event-dependent preferences

This article generalizes Savage's theory to include event-dependent preferences. The state space is partitioned into finitely many events. The induced preferences over consequences are assumed independent of the underlying states within, but not across, these events. This results in an additively separable representation of preferences over acts. The dependence of the preference relation over consequences on the events is represented by event-dependent mappings of the set of consequences onto itself. Given these mappings, the preferences on acts are represented by the expectation of event-dependent utilities on the consequences with respect to unique subjective probabilities on the states.Helpful discussions with David Schmeidler are gratefully acknowledged.     

中国古代财富思想的现代价值

财富是古今中外各种经济学说关注的核心问题。中国古代思想家对于财富问题的诸种言说亦有其现代价值。历代先贤往哲对于人财富本质的直觉参悟,对欲望合理性的朴素阐释,以及关于社会成员求利正当性的道义边界等均有独到见地,其与现代市场经济关于经济人的理性预设颇可互相参证。     

社会主义本质的辩证思考——一种效率与公平的认识视角

邓小平同志关于社会主义本质的理论包含着解放和发展生产力与消除两极分化、实现共同富裕这两个方面内容.解放和发展生产力就是强调社会主义的效率问题,而实现共同富裕就是追求社会主义的公平问题.没有效率的社会主义公平只能是平均主义,不是真正的社会主义;没有公平的社会主义效率就会造成两极分化和社会动荡,也不是真正的社会主义.只有这两方面的辩证统一,才能真正体现社会主义的本质和优越性.社会主义的公平原则需要社会政策的构建和维护.全面辩证地理解社会主义的本质,对当前和谐社会的构建有重大的指导意义.     

考虑实体店公平关切的制造商线上入侵策略研究

在单一线下模式销售的基础上,考察制造商以转销模式进行线上入侵和以代销模式进行线上入侵这两种模式,通过数理推导和数值仿真得到的研究结果表明：（1）当实体店具有公平关切心理时,制造商进行线上入侵总是有利的。（2）当消费者对线上渠道接受程度较高且实体店公平关切程度较低时,制造商将以转销模式进行线上入侵;当消费者对线上渠道接受程度较低时,制造商会以代销模式进行线上入侵,并不受实体店公平关切程度的影响;而当消费者对线上渠道接受程度适中且实体店的公平关切程度较高时,制造商倾向于以转销模式进行线上入侵。（3）无论制造商选择哪种模式进行线上入侵,制造商的线下零售价格始终高于线上。此外,随着实体店公平关切程度的增强,线上渠道和线下渠道的零售价均会同步提高。